Sunday, August 21, 2016

Daenerys Targaryen: the Return of the Goddess

Daenerys Targaryen is, no doubt, one of the most interesting characters of the TV series "the Game of Thrones." An assertive, dominating queen portraited in a positive light; a character that would have been inconceivable in the fiction of just some decades ago. Something seems to be changing in the human mindscape.The article by Gunnar Bjornson reproduced below (from "Katehon") reflects this mindscape change. It is dedicated to exploring the idea that some of the themes of "The Game of Thrones" are influenced by a return of the Goddess in the mindsphere; a creature that he identifies as "Cybele", the Graeco-Roman version.

This article is highly questionable in several respects; not the least one that of dividing the human views of the world into three well-defined categories, inspired to Apollo, Dyonisius, and Cybele. It is a much more complex story than that and this kind of forcing the narrative into categories often has quite some problems in maintaining even a minimum contact with reality: See, for instance this sentence:

The Logos of Cybele thus concerns materialism, the dominance of the female over male, progressivism (development from highest to lowest), linear time, and the possession of wealth as the sole purpose of life.

Hmmm.... did I say "highly questionable?" Yes, I did. Yet, I thought that it was worth reproducing this piece in the "Chimera Myth" blog, where I have often discussed the theme of the Goddess.

The sixth season of the popular fantasy saga "Game of Thrones" has concluded. True fans are worrying about the events of the last 10 episodes. The series has turned out to be surprisingly successful, with a both sudden and drastic development of story lines and in terms of the actors' performances and music and special effects. But most importantly, the last season demonstrates the triumph of well-defined archetypes underlying modern Western civilization. Perhaps not a single piece of recent popular culture has revealed this so vividly as “Game of Thrones.” Thus, it is necessary to turn once again to the mythology and philosophy of this popular show.

The victory of women

One of the most important results of the storyline at the end of the sixth season is the triumph of the female characters in the saga. Cersei Lannister takes the Iron Throne of Westeros and kills all of her opponents. In the kingdom of Dorn as well, all power goes to women. Having killed ruler Prince Doran Martell and his cousin, Ellara Sand declares that the government no longer "belongs to weak men." In the North, Sansa Stark makes a decisive contribution to the victory over Ramsey Bolton. Arya Stark begins to implement her plan of revenge and stabs Walder Frey. On the Iron Islands, the lesbian Yara Greyjoy aims to become the first woman on the throne, and then joins Deyneris Targaryen, another strong woman who seeks to conquer the whole of Westeros. Both Dorn and the House of Tyrell, which is also headed by a woman, Olenna Tyrell, are ready to join Deyneris. And even Northern lords are humiliated by young Lady Mormont.

The unconditional domination of the feminine is thus the main feature of the sixth season. Male characters go by the wayside in a context of female domination. In medieval surroundings, an entirely strange picture is recreated. Of course, the European Middle Ages knew the reign of Queens. But not on this scale. The Middle Ages were foremost the era of the dominance of patriarchal relations and the male heroic type.

The rise of power-hungry women in the series is clearly consistent with the trends of real politics. Hillary Clinton, in the country where the series is produced, enjoys the sympathy of its creators. However, it is not only in this way that the series’ authors are trying to promote Clinton. Rather, there is another reason tied to the working of myths.

European society ceased to be the Christian one of the Middle Ages when it became “modern.” The modern world triumphed because it killed, crucified, and subjected directly to genocide (as in Ireland and the Vendee) the “old order,” the spirit of the old patriarchal-aristocratic and traditional Europe. Because of this, any clash between modernity in the Middle Ages is always hysterical. In this feminine hysteria, modernity reveals its true nature.

Gynecocracy

The series, like any other product of mass culture that works with images of the past, projects such on current trends. Romantic and unnatural surroundings are made more brighter and more visible than they are in real life. Gynecocracy, or women's dominance, is a feature unnatural to patriarchal Indo-European civilization, and especially for the type of thinking that dominated the historical era of the Middle Ages. This thinking was based on the celestial Apollonian philosophy of Platonism, which was adopted by Christianity. In its origins, it was based on the domination of celestial male deities over the chthonic creatures of Mother Earth (Titanomachy and Gigantomachy of ancient mythology) and the paternal principle over the mother’s one, heaven over earth and the chthonic, a priority that in religious and philosophical systems was given to the idea of the world. This was characteristic of the Indo-European worldview before the adoption of Christianity. The dominance of spirit over body, hierarchy, discipline, duty, sacrifice, honor, order, tradition, faith, and patriarchal family were the principles inherent to this particular civilization of true Europe.

On the contrary, matriarchal traits, such as the dominance of earthly sensuality and material wealth, were always associated with women in Indo-European families and cults. This, together with the legalization of every form of perversion and degeneracy, a distinctive feature of modern times in Europe, broke with traditional institutions. The famous traditionalist philosopher Julius Evola noted that the modern civilization of the West is based on the ideas which the ancient Indo-Europeans attributed to the feminine principle:

With the advent of democracy, the proclamation of 'immortal principles’, the 'rights of man and citizen’, and the subsequent development of these 'conquests' in Europe into Marxism and Communism, it is exactly the 'natural right', the leveling and anti-aristocratic law of the Mother, that the West has dug up, renouncing any ‘solar', virile Aryan value and confirming, with the omnipotence so often granted to the collectivist element, the ancient irrelevance of the individual to the 'telluric' conception.

Three Logoi The contemporary Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, in his complex project “Noomahy", (“war of minds” in Greek) offers an interesting interpretive model in which he reviews the structure of the three fundamental paradigms of thought corresponding to the three types of philosophy, religion, mythology, ritual, symbolism, epistemology and anthropology, which correspond to three mythological figures from Greek mythology: Apollo, Dionysus and Cybele.

The Apollonian Logos is related to Platonism and the traditional Indo-European solar theme. It emphasizes eternity, heaven, the paternal, and the spiritual, as opposed to the earthly, temporal, maternal, and material. This paradigm of thought states that only the divine and celestial, for example Platonic ideas, really exist. The world, as the organized cosmos, has a hierarchical structure which is aimed at the apophatic horizon of the inaccessible One. In politics, such a logos preaches monarchy, the reign of the philosophers, the idea of an eternal empire, hierarchy and caste society.

The Dionysian Logos is that of mysteries, battle and marriage, death and resurrection, the interpenetration of earth and heaven, earth’s subordination to the heavens, and the soul reigning over body, as form over matter. This is the philosophy of Aristotle, the metaphysics of the Son in Christianity, and Catholic Thomism. In politics, this is the idea of the imperial, eschatological savior king. It entails a distinctly messianic eschatology.

The Logos of Cybele, named after the Goddess of Asia Minor, is a matriarchal cult of the Great Mother, the Earth, believed to generate all. This is the idea of the material origin of things and the solely material nature of the world. This is the philosophy of Epicurus and Democritus, the ancient materialists, and the ideas of the Roman Titus Lucretius Carus of the evolution of species and the spontaneous generation of life from Mother Earth.

In fact, this logos is an extrapolation of the ancient feminine chthonic myths that have since become the axioms of modern science. These were chtonic cults where the dogmas of modern science first originated. The is the dominant Logos in modern times which manifests itself in the form of scientific thinking. At the same time, however, it is still an archaic mythology inherent to pre-Indo-European ethnic groups in Europe. The Logos of Cybele thus concerns materialism, the dominance of the female over male, progressivism (development from highest to lowest), linear time, and the possession of wealth as the sole purpose of life.

The religious centers of the matriarchal goddesses, such as the temple of Artemis in Ephesus, served as the first banking centers. The Greek philosopher and atomist Democritus was one of the first to put into practice the method of speculation and considered democracy to be the ideal political system (Plato and Aristotle considered it to be the worst). The same Democritus blinded himself in order to refrain from looking at women, a fact which resembles the ritual self-castration of the priests of Cybele in Asia Minor.

The Face of Cybele Democracy, progressivism, evolutionism, feminism, egalitarianism and the destruction of traditional hierarchies, the revolt against the gods, gender ideology, atomism, materialism, capitalism - all of these ideas are very archaic phenomena that have become modern only because Europe chose them in the early modern period and abandoned its former identity. These are in fact integral elements of the cult of the Great Mother. And the further we are from the historical Middle Ages, the more the ancient goddess veils her face under the guise of modernity.

And in Game of Thrones, the Gestalt of Cybele is extremely open. One of the key characters of the series, Princess Daeyneris Targaryen, embodies this archetype more than any other character. Let us recall that the Great Mother (Cybele, Rhea, Ishtar) in Greek, Asia Minor’s and Semitic mythologies is surrounded by chthonic monsters. Her priests practiced ritual castration and, in addition to the court of monsters and eunuchs, there were also dwarfs. Throughout the whole story, Deyneris is accompanied by chthonic monsters, dragons, to which she refers as to her children, and she is worshipped by an army of castrated slaves. Other male characters finally come to Cybele-Deyneris having experienced the act of castration, such as the eunuch Varys and Tyrion Greyjoy, whose sister Yara is also an embodiment of the archetype of the insurgent Cybele.

Naturally, the only dwarf in the series, Tyrion Lannister, is also in the end included in the court of Daeyneris. She destroys social hierarchy in the conquered cities, eradicates slavery and introduces election management insisting on equality and multicultural democracy. The egalitarian masses proclaim her to be “Mother" (Misa). As the Mother of Dragons and mother of rebellious slaves, it is is symbolic that the Phrygian cap, the headdress of Cybele’s lover Attis, became a symbol of the rebel slaves in Rome, and then the symbol of the French Revolution.

The main centers of Cybele’s cult were located in Asia Minor. Coincidentally, in these cults was the culture and geographical design of the continent of Essos, where Daeyneris begins the invasion of Westeros, which resembles ancient Asia Minor. Thus, her war is a war of Cybele’s Logos destined to conquer Europe and suppress all the remains of old traditional order.

Of course, she is not the only embodiment of this principle. Other facets of the archetype of Cybele are revealed in the character of Cersei Lannister who creates children from sexual relations with her own twin brother, the person most biologically identical to herself. In this can be seen the myth of parthenogenesis, the birth of Mother Earth’s children by and out of herself. They are destined to fail and be killed as are many of the creatures of the earth like the numerous offspring of the goddess Gaia in the Greek myths of the Olympic gods. Everything that she likes is associated with death since her love is insatiable and proprietary and killing is the love of Cybele. It is this archetype which leads those she loves (like her lover Attis) to their death.

In modern mass culture, we see the resurgence of ancient myths earlier veiled by the hypnosis of scientific thought, rationality or “common sense.” But, as the prominent German conservative and specialist in Greek mythology, Friedrich Georg Junger, said, when the gods are gone, the titans occupy their place.

Rejecting the celestial spirituality of Christianity, the West was doomed to chthonic matriarchal cults and to the resurgence of ancient mythical figures in its imagination. Cybele’s trend in Game of the Thrones is just one example of the changing gender mythology of the West which is renouncing its masculinity in psychological self-castration. From imagination, this will turn into real politics to the point that we will soon see the deadly incarnation of the bloody goddess enthroned.

Catastrophe Catastrophe is the fate of the titans, the sons of Gaia, just as it is her own. The catastrophic absence of a “happy ending” is a distinct feature of Game of Thrones. The series’ credibility and success is largely due to the fact that the authors allow the myth to work. The myth of female domination and titanic power, as the above-mentioned Friedrich Georg Jünger noted, is inevitably linked with the prospects of disaster and catastrophe. The Greek word for catastrophe literally means to turn to the bottom, to matter and the Great Mother. The disaster awaits those who stand on the side of chthonic power, who follow their passions, and stand in the ranks of the army of titans. Their lack of the harmony given by God to the world will be punished. The disaster is always present where there is an immoderate desire for power. Another leitmotif of Game of Thrones. In the world of Game of Thrones, the Middle Ages without Christ, there is no other possible outcome than one of total destruction. The imaginary world of the West shares the fate of and projects the future of the real world.